Teacher, tell me about her
by Yanghuntlove
Summary: This is a conversation between Owen Hunt and Richard Webber. I have tagged it Cristina and Owen as the men are talking about Cristina.


**Author's note: This fiction is a talk between Richard and Owen but as they are talking about Cristina I have included it in the arsenal of Cristina/Owen fan fictions.**

**I wanted to pick up on what Meredith said in the S8 SP about being raised by Ellis who as she put it was a "Cristina." So I figured who better to explore that with than Ellis' own "Owen", Richard Webber!**

**Hope you enjoy!xxxx**

Richard slowly eased open the door to the attending's lounge. He had just scrubbed out of a transplant procedure that had not ended positively. He needed a coffee to face the rest of his shift. Well, if he was honest with himself he needed a scotch but the fact he was on call and the more important matter of his year of sobriety meant caffeine would have to suffice. It was 11pm, so he expected everyone else to be either at home with their families or grabbing what little sleep, or whatever else they got up to, in the on call rooms.

"Hunt? Not going home?" The sight of Owen nursing an empty mug on the sofa in the half light confused Richard. He expected him, as he was still within the walls of the hospital at this hour, to at least be pouring over the paper work that had marked out many hours during his own long tenure as Chief but not tonight. Owen seemed melancholy, perfectly still but unsettled.

"Difficult day." Owen lamented, placing the cup on the table and wringing his hands."Have you ever had a day when the one person you want to talk to is the one person you are the most angry at?" He didn't know what made him say those words in the presence of Richard but he felt compelled to push them out into the space and as a result he instantly felt lighter.

"Well this doesn't sound like a difficult work day." Richard probed carefully, setting down his own now full coffee cup on the table and taking the seat opposite the man who had stepped into the shoes he had so comfortably worn for so many years of his career.

"Can I ask you something personal Richard?" Owen felt instantly uncomfortable, he was known in the hospital for not being one to ever broach personal subjects willingly with his colleagues, but with this elder mentor he felt a little more at ease.

"Of course." Richard was now intrigued.

"Did you never want children?" The question came out barely above a whisper and hung awkwardly between the two men for a moment.

Richard pondered how to answer the question and decided he could only answer one way. He led with the truth. "Adele wanted children. We were very young when we met, i loved her and then I fell in love a second time. I fell in love with surgery and my career become my baby. Then there was Ellis, another great love of my life."

A chapter of his life he should have been ashamed of but still to think of Ellis Grey, after all these years, wrapped Richard in a warmth that felt protective. He was not proud of the fact he had committed adultery or hurt Adele and Meredith and even Thatcher, but his heart could not deny its decision. There of course was regret. Regret of the pain they caused and a small sense of foolish doubt in his final choice- he had let his head make the decision and stayed safe. If he had taken a risk, who knows where his life would have led him.

"Once I stopped being a coward, stopped convincing myself that no one was getting hurt and made my choice, it was too late. Adele had a miscarriage a few years ago and we never really talked about it after that. We fixed our marriage and children never became part of our story. And now, she is...well you know how she is." Richard ran his index finger round the rim of his cup thoughtfully. He had in fact had many children, he mused, his army of surgeons, he had raised them from the infancy of internships to the adulthood of professorships. He had shared the joys, the frustrations and the hurt with his surgical children. He was a parent in everything but biology.

The silence that fell between the two men resonated heavily with emotion but there was no hint of tension. Owen rubbed his forehead, thinking to himself that he shouldn't be burdening Richard with his worries when he was fighting a battle to hold onto his wife against an enemy that was determined to strip her of everything that made her the woman he loved.

"Richard, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...I shouldn't have..."

"Hunt. What is this about?" Richard cut him off. The former Chief knew better than most, the perils of keeping things to yourself, of carrying your pain around like a dead weight and letting it consume you from the inside out. He liked this young man, he respected his skill and his character, admired his tenacity and bravery. He had fought demons at home and abroad and won. Richard wished he had possessed some of Owen's strength earlier in his life, maybe if he had he would have been better equipped for the foe he was facing in his twilight.

"Cristina was pregnant." Saying the words out loud with no sense of the usual joy associated with the phrase felt heavy on Owen's heart. "She told me she would love a baby, but wanted to be a surgeon, not a mother. And then I held her hand while she took away a part of me."

Without judgement, Richard just sat and listened. "Why did you stand beside her in that room?"

"Because, for better for worse, in that moment she needed me." Owen professed sadly. He cautiously continued, knowing that neither himself or Richard had the easiest relationship with the person who had, in part, guided his decision that day. "Meredith told me that Cristina would resent our child. She told me I was punishing her for being the woman I fell in love with. She told me that she was raised by a 'Cristina'." Owen looked up and fixed the older man's steady gaze, his face imploring Richard to answer him plainly. "Is she like her? Is Cristina like Meredith's mother?" Owen wasn't sure if he wanted Richard to validate or refute this comparison, there was too much at stake either way. To know his dreams of a family were either never going to be realised or would be left as a vague maybe in the distant sometime.

"Well, Meredith is right. Cristina is like Ellis in many ways." A shy smile was cast over Richard's lips as he thought about the woman he had at one time though he would raise a family with. He looked up and saw the look of defeat on Owen's face, but was not perturbed. This was not a moment for sugar coating. Richard knew that a man who had faced modern warfare was one who could cope with the brutality of the reality of his current quandary.

"Ellis, like Cristina, was a brilliant talent in the OR. Right from the start everyone knew her name would go down in the surgical history books, that she would create her own methods and procedures and win awards. If you don't know that about Yang by now you must be blind. She, like Ellis Grey, will be a trail blazer." These words were shared with all the pride a teacher feels in a star student. Even though not directly her mentor, despite being a specialist and a talent in his own chosen specialty, Richard was part of Cristina's professional growth. He knew he had Imparted some valuable lessons about respect of the patient and colleagues that transcended the medicine. Lessons that would make her not necessarily a more skilled surgeon but a more well rounded doctor.

"I know Cristina's talent. I see it. God, I admire it. I am proud of her, as a teacher and a husband. But what about the Ellis who wasn't a surgeon. The one you knew?" Owen's tone was desperate. He needed to know if the way he saw his wife was totally at odds with the way her other person saw her. And if it was, then whose vision was blurred? Did the force of the love and passion he felt for his wife make him see her only as he wanted to?

"Ellis was simply Ellis. She defined herself by her gift, much like Cristina, much like Margaret Campbell. She couldn't or wouldn't allow herself to be anything other than a surgeon. She fought against being a wife and totally shut down from being a mother. Meredith wandered the halls of this hospital as a little girl searching for warmth, for love, for attention that her mother found and gave in the OR."

He paused and looked at Owen. The younger Chief's face was etched in resignation. Realisation of just how wrong he was invading his features. The wife he had seen begin to open up and widen her reach would not go any further. She had let him into the fringes of herself when he had thought she was truly giving him everything.

"But Cristina is more than that, Hunt." Owen furrowed his brow, confusion and a flicker of hope clouding his mind as Richard's baritone soothed the harshness of the words.

"She never wanted to marry Burke. Preston wanted her to want it and Cristina, being Cristina, tried to want it to. She tried to not fail. On your wedding day, she stood there not just for you but for herself. She opened herself up to be more than a surgeon in those moments." Richard waited for Owen to register what he was saying and a slow nod of the red head gave him permission to continue.

"She is driven, loyal, smart, ambitious. All the things she is required and expected to be in order to mark her out as a great surgeon. I think you have asked more of her than anyone ever has personally. You have asked her to be all those things outside of the OR, to channel it into a marriage. To allow herself to be loved and love you back unguarded. Thatcher asked the same of Ellis and she couldn't do it. She probably didn't try hard enough. But I don't see that in Cristina. She may not believe she can do it, or that she deserves it but she will believe, in her own way, that she has to try." Richard had seen a spark in Cristina in that exam room on the night when she had first met Major Hunt. He recognised it as the same one he had felt light a touch paper in his own soul the moment he had locked eyes with Ellis Grey. The spark of complicated, all or nothing love. A love that could carry you higher than the brightest stars, yet drag you to the deepest depths of darkness. A love you simply couldn't live without.

"So what do I do, Richard? We can't stay the way we are. Together but disconnected, it's not the marriage I want." Owen felt utterly defeated. After everything they had come through to be together, they were at a cross roads and he could feel them already stepping away from each other. He didn't know who he was without her. Could he survive in another after? In the after Cristina?

"Hunt, I can't tell you why she feels this way or if she will ever change her mind. Only she can and she may only do that if you ask. So ask her the hard questions, listen to the answers, dare to dream big. Don't leave things unsaid now that it may be too late to repeat. Don't be a heart in a box Hunt." With a gentle clap on his shoulder Richard left Owen sitting alone in the dark.

Pushing the empty cup to the middle of the table, Owen stood up. He had spent too long in the shadows, it was time to find the light. Time to re-find his Cristina.


End file.
